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Issue No. 200 | May 16, 2025 | Read Online
It’s October. The World Series is taking place. The Dodgers are trying to repeat and are attempting the feat against the surprise Tigers. It’s shockingly cold in Detroit for Game 6, and Tarik Skubal’s stuff doesn’t have its usual movement.
He gets rocked by 17 All-Star hitters the Dodgers employ, and the Tigers lose Game 6. The series is headed back to L.A.
After the game, Skubal is asked about it.
And of course he says, “They should have brought in the 8 inch baseballs instead of the 9 inch ones because the 8 inch baseballs perform better for us pitchers in the freezing cold weather like we had today. They spin more and cut harder through the cold air molecules.”
Today’s newsletter is presented by Precision Pro, and it is a Precision Pro product that players will need to use this week to find someone that cares about their mud ball plight at Quail Hollow.
If you squint hard enough and look far enough, there is probably some fan way out there in the distance that will commiserate with their grievances at the PGA Championship on Thursday.
Our recommendation for this year’s Wanamaker replica.
My recommendation if anyone is looking: The Titan Elite Rangefinder.
It’s the one I currently have in the bag, and in addition to helping players look for someone who cares about the mud on their ball, it also gives you front-middle-back distances to the green and has a feature that provides notifications to your phone if you leave it behind.
Great stuff and so many different use cases (including aggrieved pros!).
OK, now onto the news.
1. That Skubal scenario above is obviously made up, and it is a very extreme, outrageous and hypothetical example of what players are trying to get the PGA to do at Quail Hollow. But fundamentally, it is not that different. In both instances, a professional athlete wants the rules of their sport to be amended because weather created a randomness that players don’t like.
I don’t need to rehash the quotes here. Scottie talked about it. Keegan. Xander talked about the boys in the locker room being big mad. Everybody’s upset.
Here’s the deal if you’re a top player though. I get why you’re mad and frustrated about this — and I honestly could kind of be talked into either side here — but shouldn’t you kind of embrace a uniformly applied randomness like mud balls (everyone gets them!) as opposed to the more uneven random weather draw (only half the field or less gets it)? One of those is just accepted as part of the deal, and one is decried!
It’s not like top players are the only ones who got mud balled. Everybody did! And I would think that as top players, you’re kind of glad because you are (probably) more mentally and emotionally prepared than the other 155 guys who are getting it.
Here’s what Nicklaus used to say about bad weather.
The old story is that Jack Nicklaus would pull back the curtains of his hotel room on a rainy day and know he already had half the field beat. If those players didn’t want to be there, he figured, they weren’t likely to put up much of a fight.
Because Nicklaus recognized that golf isn’t played in a dome, he embraced learning how to adjust his game to the elements—how the club digs into squishy fairways, how the ball travels through heavier air, when to put the ball back in your stance to keep it low, and when to launch it high to let it ride. Nicklaus knew he just needed to adapt better than others, because golfers in bad weather usually can be broken into three groups.
"One simply stays home until the rain stops. If you're playing in a tournament, you can't do that.” Nicklaus told Golf Digest in 2012. “Another group goes out and plays but with a negative attitude and usually a lot of griping and poor scores. The third group accepts the elements as just another variation of the game. When I was playing tournament golf, I made sure I was in that third group."
Golf Digest
That’s … kinda similar to what’s happening here, isn’t it?!
2. Yes, there is a lot of luck involved with mud balls, and absolutely, it is frustrating that you can’t control the spin. One hundred percent, nobody is arguing that.
However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a thing — like a lot of things in golf — that you can choose to either embrace or let it upend you. An unusual element of major championship golf that again, the top players should be better equipped than anyone to handle from an emotional and mental perspective.
If golf was supposed to be fair, and I truly mean this, then we would play shotgun starts and be able to pull the golf ball out of fairway divots.
There are a lot of things that could be done to make championship golf more fair. But the longer I have been in this world, the more I realize championship golf is sometimes not about golf at all. It’s about testing everything else you contain as a human.
Moving toward pure fairness is a slippery slope that ends with players getting free relief because there’s a cable cord the diameter of a shoelace 200 yards ahead of them and we just call it TIO. I am broadly sympathetic to players not being able to control their golf ball because the dirt got too wet (normal sport), but I think the path toward complete and utter fairness is what leads to the 2043 PGA Championship being played in a simulator.
Mud balls stink for players, nobody is arguing that, but the alternative is that you start giving an inch, and players start taking the whole green mile.
3. On that note, I heard a quote on the broadcast today about how it was cool that the course architects at Quail consulted with players it was built and redesigned and redesigned again.
All of that is fine, but wouldn’t that be like … a professor asking his students what should be on the exam?
“This is a fair test,” said the students who determined the questions that were on it.
I mean … yeah.
The fairness of the test should be whatever you, the professor, deem is fair.
In this scenario, by the way, ChatGPT is definitely tantamount to driver head technology. Both make the test giver say, “Well crap, what are we going to do now?”
This post will continue below for Normal Club members, and it will not be all about mud balls and golf course architecture (except for maybe one more).
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.
4. I promise not to rant about golf course things all week (though … do you want to talk Ryan Gerard?) but one more take if you’ll allow me.
I am a neophyte when it comes to course architecture, and yet it seems like common sense (?) that you should cut down the rough and tall stuff around the green in many (but not all) instances to make greens more difficult to get to. Three Dumb Architecture Person reasons.
1. It looks cooler and better.
2. It increases the risk (and thus the reward) of the shot.
3. What am I missing here?
At one point, Brooks was 60th in proximity to the hole at an average of, like, 50 feet but even par on the day. He eventually ejected, but he got some preposterous breaks on truly horrible shots early on.
This seems like an easy W all the way around for the course and the setup. And, honestly, who cares what the players think.
Remember, they are the test taker, not the test giver.
5. There were a couple of normal sport moments on Thursday, but turtle carnage was easily my favorite. ESPN brought on a rules official (!!) who — in 100 percent seriousness and without irony — said the sentence, “We had some turtles coming out of the lake and do some damage to the bunker.”
No notes.
6. Speaking of the broadcast, one thing that has always bothered me about any broadcast, really, is how awesome everything always is. I am for sure guilty of this at times, but as one of my friends always says, If everything is a big deal then nothing is a big deal.
Same thing applies here. If everything is awesome then absolutely nothing is awesome. If Augusta is awesome and Quail is awesome and oh so is the Deere, then what exactly is the difference in all of those?
The problem here obviously is that TV contracts are far more important than intellectual honesty, and the incisiveness of the takes is normally inversely related to the size of an individual’s paycheck. At best, you stay silent. If you ever want to know whether a broadcaster is for or against a specific thing, listen for the silence.
I understand there are reasons for all of this, but it’s also a good note that you should support independent media outlets that are not tethered to entities like Augusta National, the PGA of America or the PGA Tour, despite what the LIV bots would have you believe (which you are, and I thank you!).
7. Rory hit about as poorly as I’ve seen him hit it on Thursday. He has now hit … wait … 11 of his last 42 fairways dating back to Philly Cricket last weekend?
As an aside: It’s harder to get a mud ball if you don’t hit the fairway.
Who knows what he’ll do over the next three days, but this did remind me a bit of what happened to Scottie in 2022 when he missed his only major cut of the last five years at Southern Hills after an extremely emotional Masters win.
It’s so, so tough to rebound emotionally from a win like Rory had at ANGC, and while I do think Rory will almost certainly win more majors in the future, I’m kicking myself for not seeing the downturn happening this week.
Also of note, I found myself far less invested in his round on Thursday than I normally am. It is weird to be invested in anyone’s round at all, I realize, but in the first round on Thursday, I almost felt like I had a monkey off my back even though I have hit as many major championship golf shots as De’Aaron Fox has (idk, he was on my mind after seeing Ryan Fox lead all day).
Again, none of this is normal, but I didn’t find myself living and dying with every shot, trying to will him to break the major drought. I guess what I’m saying is I feel more emotionally stable about his rounds than I used to.
I’m sure this will last exactly one major.
8. Bad leaderboards happen. Heck, in 2017 at this very golf course, the leaderboard after 54 holes wasn’t exactly amazing. Then J.T. goes on to win.
There was some late movement on Thursday with Ludvig, Bryson, Hovland and others that brought about a little hope for those who don’t want to revisit an Alex Smalley romp on Wikipedia five years from now.
Also, the good folks over at Data Golf dug up this insane first round board from the 2011 Open Championship. Look at this!
What’s more intriguing to me is trying to figure out why this is happening. Why is the board this strange looking. These guys at the top are not only not good players but have not been playing good golf! This is the type of board you would expect to see at an Open Championship, not at a barely souped-up PGA Tour event.
Today felt like total randomness — and can probably be attributed to several guys putting their faces off as the top four putters are all in the top eight on the leaderboard — but I’ve been studying this 2024 Data Golf newsletter about which courses reward skill like it’s the Zapruder Film!
Also, this was a great point from their live blog.
It’s very bizarre to see critics of Quail Hollow interpreting the weak early leaderboard as an indictment of the course. As far as I could tell, the criticism leading up to the tournament was that Quail Hollow sorted on skill too much due to it asking the same question on every hole (hit long, straight tee shots and approaches). Also, I think we all know that if Quail Hollow was considered an architectural gem, this leaderboard would be interpreted as “rewarding different skill sets than the typical PGA Tour course”.
Data Golf
9. Scottie hit it so terribly over his first nine. So bad. Just wonky and all over the place. Of course he shot 69. He reminded us that he loathes disorder and randomness (mud balls) just as he did last year when he was so frustrated about some of the lies he got in the brush-y stuff at Pinehurst, but he also noted today what I said above about Nicklaus. His attitude toward the round was good, per usual, despite the mud balls.
I did a good job of battling back today and not letting a bad break like [the mud ball double on 16], which cost me a couple shots, get to me. Did a good job battling after that and posting a decent score.
Scheffler | 2025 PGA
Now, he has a clear run to major No. 3. This is not a golf course that I would think sets up great for him because his best skills are decision making, humility and good misses (all are kind of the same thing), but with nobody of note in front of him and some bad strikes out of the way, it’s pretty easy to see him going 68-69-68-trophy.
10. There were a couple of times today when Rory’s group was playing and the audio went out for 20+ seconds. It was obviously just a production error, but in my head I was imagining this being the dump button because Harry Diamond — who almost literally never says a word — unleashed an unholy string of expletives, the likes of which would make a minor league baseball manager blush.
“That’s the best ******* shot I’ve ever ********* seen you hit you little ****** none of these other ******** have a ******** chance at ********* beating you, we’re going to ********* win the ********** slam.”
Things of that nature. I don’t know why it was making me laugh so hard. Probably because I’ve heard Harry say about four words over the last 10 years and probably because you always get a little punch drunk during the first two days of majors.
The tweet below (about something else I was discussing) is both the perfect way to describe golf twitter and also does seem to apply here.
11. Luke Donald’s 67 made me howl. Luke Donald?! His last top 10 anywhere in the world was [flips through Data Golf for several minutes] a T10 at the Dunhill … before Covid. He hasn’t made a cut anywhere since he finished T48 at the BMW PGA Championship last September.
Since January 1, 2018, he has as many wins as a Ryder Cup captain or co-captain (2) as he has top 10s as a player (also 2). He’s one back at the PGA Championship and beat the guy who won the 2025 PLAYERS and the 2025 Masters and has won four times on this golf course … by seven on Thursday.
Golf is so stupid.
Last note on Donald: He’s also three years younger than Phil was when he won at Kiawah over Brooks in 2021. I think we will probably look back on that Phil win and, with more context, realize that it was even more insane than we thought.
Also, I’m rooting for Donald. He’s for sure going to shoot 74-77-73, but I’m rooting for him. No top twos at majors when you’re world No. 1 but then contending in one at age 47 would be hilarious, amazing stuff.
12. Two Sergio tweets that got me good.
13. Here are your low golfers from Round 1 …
American: Ryan Gerard
European: Luke Donald (tied)
Rest of world: Jhonattan Vegas
LIV golfer: Tyrrell Hatton
Former major winner: Matt Fitzpatrick (tied)
Recent Euro Ryder Cupper: Alex Noren (tied)
Recent (?) U.S. Ryder Cupper: Keegan Bradley (lol)
Max: Greyserman
JT: Poston
There are five majors total among the top 28 on the leaderboard.
Just like we all drew it up.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,963 words (!!) long about that round, and we are grateful for your support of this business. Here’s to a better R2 than we had R1.
Issue No. 200 | May 16, 2025 | Read Online
It’s October. The World Series is taking place. The Dodgers are trying to repeat and are attempting the feat against the surprise Tigers. It’s shockingly cold in Detroit for Game 6, and Tarik Skubal’s stuff doesn’t have its usual movement.
He gets rocked by 17 All-Star hitters the Dodgers employ, and the Tigers lose Game 6. The series is headed back to L.A.
After the game, Skubal is asked about it.
And of course he says, “They should have brought in the 8 inch baseballs instead of the 9 inch ones because the 8 inch baseballs perform better for us pitchers in the freezing cold weather like we had today. They spin more and cut harder through the cold air molecules.”
Today’s newsletter is presented by Precision Pro, and it is a Precision Pro product that players will need to use this week to find someone that cares about their mud ball plight at Quail Hollow.
If you squint hard enough and look far enough, there is probably some fan way out there in the distance that will commiserate with their grievances at the PGA Championship on Thursday.
Our recommendation for this year’s Wanamaker replica.
My recommendation if anyone is looking: The Titan Elite Rangefinder.
It’s the one I currently have in the bag, and in addition to helping players look for someone who cares about the mud on their ball, it also gives you front-middle-back distances to the green and has a feature that provides notifications to your phone if you leave it behind.
Great stuff and so many different use cases (including aggrieved pros!).
OK, now onto the news.
1. That Skubal scenario above is obviously made up, and it is a very extreme, outrageous and hypothetical example of what players are trying to get the PGA to do at Quail Hollow. But fundamentally, it is not that different. In both instances, a professional athlete wants the rules of their sport to be amended because weather created a randomness that players don’t like.
I don’t need to rehash the quotes here. Scottie talked about it. Keegan. Xander talked about the boys in the locker room being big mad. Everybody’s upset.
Here’s the deal if you’re a top player though. I get why you’re mad and frustrated about this — and I honestly could kind of be talked into either side here — but shouldn’t you kind of embrace a uniformly applied randomness like mud balls (everyone gets them!) as opposed to the more uneven random weather draw (only half the field or less gets it)? One of those is just accepted as part of the deal, and one is decried!
It’s not like top players are the only ones who got mud balled. Everybody did! And I would think that as top players, you’re kind of glad because you are (probably) more mentally and emotionally prepared than the other 155 guys who are getting it.
Here’s what Nicklaus used to say about bad weather.
The old story is that Jack Nicklaus would pull back the curtains of his hotel room on a rainy day and know he already had half the field beat. If those players didn’t want to be there, he figured, they weren’t likely to put up much of a fight.
Because Nicklaus recognized that golf isn’t played in a dome, he embraced learning how to adjust his game to the elements—how the club digs into squishy fairways, how the ball travels through heavier air, when to put the ball back in your stance to keep it low, and when to launch it high to let it ride. Nicklaus knew he just needed to adapt better than others, because golfers in bad weather usually can be broken into three groups.
"One simply stays home until the rain stops. If you're playing in a tournament, you can't do that.” Nicklaus told Golf Digest in 2012. “Another group goes out and plays but with a negative attitude and usually a lot of griping and poor scores. The third group accepts the elements as just another variation of the game. When I was playing tournament golf, I made sure I was in that third group."
Golf Digest
That’s … kinda similar to what’s happening here, isn’t it?!
2. Yes, there is a lot of luck involved with mud balls, and absolutely, it is frustrating that you can’t control the spin. One hundred percent, nobody is arguing that.
However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a thing — like a lot of things in golf — that you can choose to either embrace or let it upend you. An unusual element of major championship golf that again, the top players should be better equipped than anyone to handle from an emotional and mental perspective.
If golf was supposed to be fair, and I truly mean this, then we would play shotgun starts and be able to pull the golf ball out of fairway divots.
There are a lot of things that could be done to make championship golf more fair. But the longer I have been in this world, the more I realize championship golf is sometimes not about golf at all. It’s about testing everything else you contain as a human.
Moving toward pure fairness is a slippery slope that ends with players getting free relief because there’s a cable cord the diameter of a shoelace 200 yards ahead of them and we just call it TIO. I am broadly sympathetic to players not being able to control their golf ball because the dirt got too wet (normal sport), but I think the path toward complete and utter fairness is what leads to the 2043 PGA Championship being played in a simulator.
Mud balls stink for players, nobody is arguing that, but the alternative is that you start giving an inch, and players start taking the whole green mile.
3. On that note, I heard a quote on the broadcast today about how it was cool that the course architects at Quail consulted with players it was built and redesigned and redesigned again.
All of that is fine, but wouldn’t that be like … a professor asking his students what should be on the exam?
“This is a fair test,” said the students who determined the questions that were on it.
I mean … yeah.
The fairness of the test should be whatever you, the professor, deem is fair.
In this scenario, by the way, ChatGPT is definitely tantamount to driver head technology. Both make the test giver say, “Well crap, what are we going to do now?”
This post will continue below for Normal Club members, and it will not be all about mud balls and golf course architecture (except for maybe one more).
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
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